Basic skills tests will no longer be conducted in all schools

The new director of the Agency for Evaluation and Foresight of Education – formerly the Higher Council for Evaluations – Núria Planas, has already In his first public appearance, he warned that he believed the basic skills tests needed to be modified.This Tuesday, the Catalan Department of Education confirmed in a statement that it is "reformulating" the assessment calendar and its design "with the aim of achieving scientific representativeness." The most significant change in this new approach to evaluating Catalan students is that, starting this academic year, the end-of-stage tests—known as basic competencies—will no longer be administered in all schools and institutes across the country. Instead of being census-based and covering all schools, as has been the case until now, these exams will become sample-based and will only be applied in approximately seventy schools and institutes. The Department of Education assures that the selection of schools will be done "randomly, using representativeness standards, that is, with scientific criteria based on levels of school complexity, ownership, and size." The Catalan Government and the Catalan Evaluation Agency justify the change in criteria as necessary "to introduce aspects of grounding and issues of rigor, representativeness, and scientific and statistical reliability." Planas argued that "the tests inform the education system, so all test design and analysis standards must be followed, such as those used by international organizations." "They will inform the system and be comparable year after year using scientific criteria; we didn't have this before," the Director of the Evaluation Agency insisted. However, this year the new end-of-stage tests will only be administered in the 4th year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education), since in the 6th year of primary school, the general system assessments, defined by the Spanish government and mandatory throughout the country, will be carried out. External Diagnostics

On the other hand, the diagnostic assessments that all 4th grade primary and 2nd year ESO students have been taking for the past couple of years will continue to be administered to all students, meaning that all students will be assessed. However, some changes are being introduced: from now on, these exams will be graded "externally and automatically," and therefore, teachers in schools and institutes will no longer be responsible for grading the tests. Teachers had complained that This work placed an excessive burden on them.In addition, the oral expression tests in Catalan and Spanish will be maintained; these will be administered to all students, but each center will correct them internally.

The changes to the assessments have already been published in Official Gazette of the Government of Catalonia (DOGC) and, according to the Secretary of Educational Improvement, Ignasi Giménez, will allow "to have items of the topics with room for improvement, standardized with other international systems."